By Chris Mac Kenzie
The Alpine Sun

     ALPINE — Once upon a time, there was a streetcar without wheels right in the center of Alpine. Pat Heyser of Alpine remembers it because it was her grandparents, Warren and Emma Foster, who bought that streetcar from a man named Sherman. He had moved it to the village near an old stagecoach stop and sold ice cream, cold sodas and sandwiches to passing motorists.
     Later, after Heyser’s parents, Clarence and Gussie Foster took over, her dad built a log cabin right around a tree and named it the Log Cabin Café. “I remember, said Heyser, “that he built a two story addition for the kitchen in the back, extending down to the creek. The old oak tree — it’s still there in the parking lot — had a huge big limb that went right into the dining room and through the roof. It always had a stuffed skunk sitting on that branch. That oak tree has seen a lot of Alpine history.”
     The Fosters must have been nature lovers because the café had rough bark walls on the inside and Gussie, as she was known all over Alpine, had decorated them with butterflies and big moths, which she caught and doused in her jar of cyanide.

     That historic old Log Cabin Café landmark, right in the center of town, lasted for many years as the place for Alpiners to gather until it was finally torn down. The town’s old timers still don’t believe that should have happened.
     That was “then.” “Now” a bus stop replaces the stagecoach stop.
     Pat Heyser remembers still more of Alpine’s history. In the early 1970’s she and her husband, the late Les Heyser, bought two acres of beautiful open land at the upper end of Willows Road and what is now Alpine Boulevard, about a half mile east of Viejas. “It had wonderful old trees.” she said, “ and a frog pond at the one side. The former owners used to sell the frogs to the Hotel Del Coronado in San Diego. That pond is all dried up now, because it was filled with run-off from the rains.”
     She remembers the valley just below them as open land, all green and bordered with white fences. “There was a horse ranch there where the owner raised race horses. It’s not there any more,” she added a bit wistfully.
     Armando Sanchez, a lifetime area resident and Mountain Empire graduate, helped build Interstate 8, the Pine Valley Bridge and the Viejas Outlet Center. Sanchez thinks that I-8 and the Viejas Casino and Outlet Center have contributed most to the drastic changes in Alpine. “Everybody used to hang out in the Log Cabin in those days,” he said, “Now it’s the casino.”
     Linda Marie Peterson, formerly of Alpine and now of Pine Valley, chuckled at his comments: “ I can remember when I was a little girl, maybe 10 or 11, my mom used to send me down to the Log Cabin to get my dad and make him come home in time for dinner.”
     Sanchez continued, “When it snowed in the Lagunas, Old 80, now Alpine Boulevard, was bumper to bumper all the way. There wasn’t any other road. The new interstate changed all that and it was a big change.”
     “And,” he added, “there wasn’t any shopping in Alpine. The town needed more stores because, to buy anything much, you had to go down the hill. The outlet center changed all that. “Now, we need more traffic lights.” 
     Part of our traffic problems originated after the Pine Valley Bridge was completed, since it has speeded up the route to the east. “It was all open land before then,” Sanchez explained. “You had to travel down through the reservation on Old 80, then on through Guatay and Pine Valley.”
     “But you can’t go back,” he said. “The town just had to keep growing.”
     Pat Cannon and Ruth Jellison both came to Alpine in the late 60’s. Recently, when they were reminiscing about old times, Pat remembers that, as a girl, she and her mother would walk down to a bakery in the “rock house” on the Boulevard at the east end of town.
     Both of them believe that Alpine is a lot different now, and better for it. Cannon’s parents built the structure that now houses Crow’s Passage. “It was intended for the first real pharmacy in town,” Cannon said, “but that drug store eventually moved to the new Alpine Creek Shopping Center as Rexall Drugs. A few months later, Susan Hobbs opened her very popular bakery in the space.”
     Just west of that was another town fixture, Al Hinkle’s Hardware Store, carrying a little of everything, including on one side, Hinkle’s hobby: a complete aviary of beautiful tropical birds.
     The center of town was the intersection of Alpine Boulevard, Arnold Way, Victoria Drive, and the triangle of land, the site of the original small office of the Alpine Chamber of Commerce — built on land donated by Barney and Agnes Ratliff to commemorate fire fighters’ efforts in the 1970 Laguna Fire. The chamber has since moved to new offices in the Michael James Building.
     The two women remember the many changes in the business section. “Where the cycle shop is now,” Jellison said, “was Western Realty, with a life size team of horses on the roof.” Across Victoria to the east is a Southwestern style structure, one of the very early buildings still standing. It’s been a general store, a western wear shop, a small post office where the barber shop is now, and Tyler’s Tack and Feed,” the women said, commenting that the Frontier Gallery, the present occupant, looks a lot different.
     The exact center of town was always the Town Hall, built in 1899 and now owned by the Woman’s Club. “I remember climbing the outside stairs to go up to the second floor library,” Jellison said. The building originally had a bell in its little cupola but it was eventually given to the Alpine Community Church to be hung in the tower on the new sanctuary built in the 1950's. The hall has also been used as a meeting place for various churches, clubs, the Alpine Players, dances, weddings, and so on. In the very early days, it even had a “comfort station” built in back for the convenience of the public.

     Cannon, recalls The Alpine Sun moving in next door to a space that had been Dr. Peterson’s pediatric office. The newspaper had occupied several very small offices before that.
     Reminiscences came rapidly to the women as their minds traveled up and down the avenue. Gas stations that came and went. There were banks that grew and moved on; the smaller cafe that became the Alpine Inn and the liquor store next to it; the post office where the present video/ice cream parlor is; the nostalgic McGuffy’s with its original small pharmacy and later with Agnes’ home cooked meals, wonderful milk shakes and sweet desserts; Kapsalas who bought Bailey’s Restaurant when Carmen Lewis ran it, and operated it for many years. Now it’s Al Pancho’s Mexican Restaurant.
     “I remember hearing about Dinosaur Park where the Alpine Mobile Home Estates is now,” Cannon said, “But I guess there’s only one of those prehistoric replicas still around, back in the woods. Jellison recalled the time when there wasn’t any community center. “It was just a grove of trees and a tennis court.”
     “Alpine was a wonderful place to live,” Jellison said. “And it still is.” 
     Cannon heartily agreed with her: “We have some very attractive new buildings, like the Twin Plaza, the Michael James Office Building and the Alpine Regional Center.” “We’ve grown a lot and changed a lot and it’s all been for the better.” As the head of the Alpine Chamber of Commerce, you’d expect her to say that, but she really means it.
     For many, “now” in Alpine is a pretty fine place to be.

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